We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

When you break down the things we do every day to their component pieces, you begin to understand how ridiculous they are. Think about the absurdity of brushing your teeth, of arguing with your mother over the appropriateness of what you’re wearing to school, of homework, of grade-point averages and boyfriends and hot school lunches. The one that whispers you should give up, give in, that tomorrow won’t be better than today. Think about all those little rituals that sustain you throughout your day-from the moment you wake up until that last, lonely midnight hour when you guzzle a gallon of NyQuil to drown out the persistent voice in your head. We Are the Ants Chemistry: Extra Credit ProjectĬonsider your life for a moment. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it…or let the world-and his pain-be destroyed forever. Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.īut Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.Īfter all, life hasn’t been great for Henry.

Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. From the “author to watch” ( Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an “equal parts sarcastic and profound” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson